Thread by @Noahpinion

Wow. James Buchanan lost that fight in spectacular fashion.

https://twitter.com/BCAppelbaum/status/1107745883381223424

Faced with evidence that minimum wage doesn't kill jobs, Nobel laureate James Buchanan resorted to the old "So you think demand curves don't slope down?" troll.

A poor showing indeed...

cei.org/blog/minimum-w…

This is why the shift from theory to evidence in economics is such a huge deal. Buchanan's quote is an extreme example - few economists would ignore evidence *completely* based on their faith in a theory, like Buchanan does here.

But yeah, things were bad.

When you have empiricism - when the ultimate test of a theory is whether it fits the data, not whether it's philosophically pleasing - even a junior researcher can show up a respected elder like Buchanan, just by showing the data.

Empiricism is egalitarian in that respect.

And of course, when Buchanan-style dogmatism rules, respected theorists are easily able to insert their political preferences. If someone like Buchanan didn't like the minimum wage because he thought poor people didn't deserve money, he could say "Supply and demand, duh!"

The rise of empiricism in economics isn't only about understanding the world better.

It's also about rescuing the consensus from the grip of respected sages and politicized advocates.

Some economists are still vigorously fighting the shift toward empiricism in economics. Some of them want a return to the dominance of respected sages and of politics.

But they are not winning...
bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

Alan Krueger never stopped fighting to turn economics into a true empirical science.

https://twitter.com/Alan_Krueger/status/994733761668571136

Richard Feynman once said that "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
profizgl.lu.lv/pluginfile.php…

Econ has moved far in the direction of believing that its own experts are ignorant. It's not 100% there yet, but there has been so much progress.

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